


The Mage-Born Solution

by LadyDanya



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Brainwashing, Child Abduction, False Memories, Gen, chantry abuses, orphanage life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-29 19:29:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3907864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyDanya/pseuds/LadyDanya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After being named Divine, Vivienne learns one of the Chantry's darkest secrets: what happens to the children of captured apostates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mage-Born Solution

Vivienne pressed her fingers to her throbbing temples and tried in vain to massage the headache away. After her years in Celene's court she thought she was immune to the horrors of politics, but the long week since she'd formally ascended to the Sunburst Throne had proven her wrong.

"Most Holy?" One of the Chantry's mid-level clerics shuffled into her line of sight before her desk. She couldn't remember the woman's name; there had been several such ladies responsible for briefing her over the past several days, all of them aging shrews with pale pudding faces, and she couldn't yet tell them all apart behind their cowls and tall flared hats.

Vivienne wore an absurdly large headdress of her own, and a shapeless shift of a robe. She'd known that being Divine would be difficult, but Maker, she hadn't been prepared for the _horror_ that was her clothing. "Yes, my dear?" she asked wearily, plucking at the uneven hem of her sleeve.

"Enchanter Gavin from the College of Magi is ready to meet with you, Your Perfection," the cleric said, frowning as she consulted her clipboard. "You'll need to keep the meeting brief, though; you're due for dinner with the Comte at nine."

Vivienne exhaled deeply and looked around her office. The sun had long since set behind the peacock-hued panes of her stained-glass window; the flicker of candlelight across the polished surface of her massive oak desk cast long shadows and made the stack of waiting paperwork seem even larger. "You can't be serious, darling," she sighed. It had already been an achingly long day, doubly so when measured in mental energy spent.

Her mind was still awhirl with the troubling things she'd learned at her _last_ appointment; it would be a long time yet before she calmed her thoughts enough to deal coherently with anyone, let alone the Enchanter, whom she vaguely remembered from her days in the Circle as an insufferable ass. She toyed briefly with her quill before throwing it decisively down onto her desk. "Please reschedule both engagements, and make my apologies to the Comte," she said as she rose to take her leave. "I am retiring to my quarters; I simply cannot abide another meeting tonight."

The cleric stared, uncertainty bordering on horror, as Vivienne breezed past her. "But, Most Holy, we can't reschedule," she stammered; "you have the Lord Chancellor of Tantervale in the morning, followed by-"

Vivienne cut her off with a wave of her hand. "Be a good girl and deliver a bottle of wine to my quarters at once," she said.

The cleric stiffened. "I'm hardly a servant here-" she said, offended.

"A good Orlesian red, if you please," Vivienne went on, as if the woman hadn't spoken. "None of that Rivaini swill they tried to pass off at lunch. Off you go, dear."

The cleric stood rigidly for a moment, mouth agape, before sighing in acquiescence and scurrying from the room. The corner of Vivienne's mouth curled upward in the barest hint of a smile. _Divine de Fer_. It had a nice ring to it.

She paused at the doorway and looked back at her plushly appointed office, awash in golden candlelight. Her eyes lingered on the large iron-bound chest that had been delivered during her previous engagement, sitting beside the bookshelf with its lock opened and its heavy lid ajar; she let out a deeply tired sigh. The chest was full of controversial Chantry records, the secrets within recently entrusted to the new Divine, and the source of her current agitation and exhaustion.

Of course the Chantry had its share of skeletons in its closet - some literal, if what she'd learned about Divine Beatrix earlier that week could be believed - and naturally the new Divine would need to be informed of them all. It had been a long week of tense meetings and long briefings as the Chantry's dirty laundry was displayed for her review, and any lingering illusions she might have had about the organization were shed one by one. She now wanted nothing more than to go to her quarters and do her very best to _forget_ all the things that she'd learned, if only for an evening.

Despite herself, she found herself walking back across the room to kneel before the trunk, letting her thumb rifle across the edges of the file folders that filled it from end to end. Random slips of parchment stuck out here and there, some crisp and new, others weathered and brittle with age. She dipped her fingers into the row of files and pulled one out, opening the folder to reveal a small sheaf of yellowing pages covered with faded ink. She chose another at random, then another and another still, until she had a small stack of them in her hand, an arbitrary sampling of the files to take back to her room and review.

She made sure the chest was locked tightly before leaving.

 

* * *

 

 

The wine was waiting in her quarters when she arrived, and properly decanted into a crystal carafe, she noted with the ghost of a smile. This place would never be in danger of rivaling the palace for its luxuries, but she would teach them how to do things rightly yet.

She was quick to undress, shedding her poorly tailored Chantry robe for a supple dressing gown of lavender silk, nipped and darted _just so_ to perfectly flatter her figure. She was still working her way up to getting her seamstress to redesign the traditional uniform; the others were resisting, but she would wear them down soon enough. Tradition was all well and fine, but not when it involved itchy wool and headgear so tall it made one have to duck in doorways.

She took her time with her first glass of wine, trying to still her troubled mind with every sip. Her quarters were as lavishly appointed as her office, and she settled onto a plush settee before a cheerfully crackling fire with her feet up, attempting to savor both the drink and her first evening to herself in the whirlwind week since her ascension. By the time she poured her second glass she was calmer, and ready to begin the process of unknotting her tangled thoughts. She reached for the folders, fanning them across her lap, but left them closed for a moment as she pressed her eyes shut and sipped from her glass, thinking back over the day's events.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"What I'm about to tell you is known only to a handful of people within the Chantry," Revered Mother Claudine said severely as she settled her ample bottom into one of the chairs before Vivienne's desk. She'd just supervised the delivery of a large iron-bound chest, and turned to make sure the two young brothers who had settled the trunk beside the bookshelf had truly withdrawn from the room and closed the door behind them before continuing. "I shouldn't need to tell you that this is _strictly_ confidential."

"Of course, my dear," Vivienne said waspishly. She already deeply disliked this woman; it was becoming rapidly apparent to her that while some people chose Chantry service out of conviction, others withdrew to the church because their personalities kept them from succeeding in lay life. "I _am_ your superior, after all, darling; if you can't trust me, who _can_ you trust?” She punctuated this with a smile, masking the not-so-subtle reminder of the woman's place with an easy charm.

Claudine's lips disappeared, mouth pressed into a thin, flat line. She was nearly indiscernible from the others who had been paraded through Vivienne’s office over the course of the last week – aging gracelessly, wrinkled and jowly with heavy gray brows and escaped strands of dry, frizzled hair showing beneath the edge of her cowl. "Of course, Your Perfection," she said after a moment, affronted. "You'll forgive me my hesitation, I'm certain; it's just that this is a _highly_ sensitive matter. I'm here to address one of the Chantry's rather more ... contentious ... programs: the Mage-Born Solution."

The words caused Vivienne's heart to skip a beat. _Mage-Born_. For a second her mind's eye saw a frightened child with tangled dark hair and plum-colored eyes, clinging tightly to a floppy-eared stuffed rabbit as the Templars led her to the Circle. She fiercely pushed the fragmented memory away and tried to smooth her expression into disinterested blandness again.

Fortunately, the Revered Mother had missed her momentary lapse of composure; she was busy fumbling in the pocket of her robe, searching for something. She produced a large iron key, and passed it across the table to Vivienne. "The records of the program," she said, nodding to the chest.

"Explain," Vivienne commanded. She stood and crossed to the chest, knelt momentarily to turn the key in the lock, but didn't touch the musty files that were revealed within when she lifted the lid. "What is this ... _Solution_ ... you speak of?"

Claudine wet her lips. "You're aware that the Templar order has traditionally been tasked with seeking out and capturing apostate mages, among their other duties," she said.

"Naturally, darling," Vivienne drawled, stifling the urge to let out a disgusted noise as she slipped back into her chair - Maker, the bad habits she'd picked up during her time among the more ... inelegant ... members of the Inquisition had to be squashed _immediately_. She'd respected the Seeker for her faith, but her manners had left much to be desired. "Why don't you save us both time and skip ahead to the parts I _don't_ know?"

"Many young mages are reported by their families and sent to the Circle as soon as their magical abilities manifest themselves, as it should be," Claudine said. Vivienne was struck by the fact that the woman spoke - as so many of the other elder clergy members did, in fact - as if that _silly_ little mage-Templar rebellion had never happened; her decree that the Circles were to be reinstated had caused tremendous relief, particularly among the older clerics, who were inflexible to a fault. "But others are hidden by misguided family members and friends, and are allowed to remain among the general public well into their adulthood. Sometimes, the Templars don't catch up with them until after they've begun to _breed_."

She spat the word distastefully, and for a moment Vivienne clearly saw a scruffy-bearded Templar in the Ostwick circle bragging to his fellows about _something_ he'd done to a mage. She had no idea what; she'd been a mere girl of eleven, and caught just a brief glimpse of the trio as she shuffled past on her way to class. One of the other Templars had objected to whatever he'd said, and his gaze had slid over her for just a fraction of a second, catching the single violet eye that peered out from behind the unruly mop of hair that she'd grown long to hide behind. _"Does it matter? Mages aren't people,"_ he'd spat, and then she'd moved on down the hall and the moment was over.

Vivienne smiled at Claudine. "Do go on, my dear," she said warmly, mentally making a note to ensure that the Revered Mother be transferred to the ass-end of the continent at the earliest convenience.

"Very early on, the Chantry was faced with the question of what to do with their children after they were captured," Claudine said. "As magic tends to run in families, every one of these children naturally _must_ be viewed as a potential mage themselves, and treated accordingly."

Unease began to stir in the pit of Vivienne's stomach. "Of course," she said pleasantly.

"At the very least, the Chantry must be allowed to keep a very close eye on them to ensure that mage powers do not manifest when they come of age," Claudine went on. "However, this poses a problem, as few families can be counted on to cooperate. We simply cannot take the risk of placing them back in the custody of their non-mage relatives, and chance having them disappear before it's known for certain whether or not they are going to be a danger."

"Naturally," Vivienne said evenly.

"The only reasonable solution was to gather these children and concentrate their numbers in a place where they could be observed as they came of age," Claudine finished.

Vivienne felt her blood still in her veins. _Reasonable?_ She'd long supported the Chantry's efforts to keep mages in Circles, even against their will, for the sake of their own safety and the greater good of the world at large. But to hold children prisoner who _weren't_ mages yet, on the simple suspicion that they one day _could be_? She wasn't sure whether her support went quite that far.

"My dear, you're telling me that you imprison children in internment camps?" she said calmly. "In _concentration_ camps?"

"If you will," Claudine said, indifferent. "Officially, the word used is 'orphanage,' but it's a separate system than the ones used for orphans from the general population, a _harsher_ system, out of necessity. We cannot abide the threat of even a single mage-born child developing powers and becoming an apostate. This system removes that threat and keeps our world safe."

"I see," Vivienne said, allowing a note of sharpness to creep into her voice. "And yet these children are not orphans. Do their families not object to seeing their children taken without just cause?"

Claudine cast Vivienne a shrewd look. "The capturing of apostate mages is so often a chaotic event," she said carefully. "Cornered mages cast spells in haste and helpless children are so easily caught in their path. If we are forced to report to their families that the apostate's reckless use of magic resulted in the death of their own children, it aids our cause in more ways than one."

"Indeed," Vivienne said, a note of coldness creeping into her voice. "The families believe their children are dead, and you're free to do as you will to them, with the world none the wiser."

Claudine raised a bushy eyebrow, the expression oddly compressed by the lower edge of her towering cowl. "You make it sound like we torture the things," she said distastefully. "We simply keep them close so we can monitor them, so they may be taken to the Circle at the first sign of magic."

 

* * *

 

 

Vivienne held her wine glass up and swirled it slowly, watching the liquid within glow a dark amber as it caught and held the light from the fireplace.

 _The things_. The woman had actually said that, as if these weren't living, breathing _human beings_ she'd been talking about.

She shifted her gaze to the untouched folders in her lap. Every folder in that very large chest had been a child, a _person_ , a life cut short, a family grieving for a child they thought dead. But, potentially, they were also a mage who developed their talents in the safety of a Circle, a village that never knew the devastation that unschooled magic could wreak, a demon that was never permitted entry across the Veil.

She wasn't certain that the ends justified the means ... but she also wasn't certain that they _didn't_ , either.

And as the head of the Chantry, it was her _job_ to be certain.

 _Mages aren't people_ , the Templar's voice echoed in her head. She'd selected a random sample of the files for just that reason - to put names and stories to these dusty folders so that they would _be_ people to her, instead of _things,_ as she made up her mind.

She opened the top folder and looked at the papers within. They were crumpled, a dirty boot print clearly visible on the first page. She took another drink of her wine, and began to read.

 

* * *

 

 

\-----------------------------------------

***CONFIDENTIAL***

Case File: FE-1248

Birth Name: Garrett Hawke

Assigned Name: _< illegible>_

\-----------------------------------------

The two boys flatten their skinny bodies into the shadows of the stairwell, pressing fisted hands to their mouths to muffle their wild giggling, and wait until the jingle of armor has made its way past them down the hall without pausing. "Did they see us?" the younger of the two asks breathlessly.

The older boy peers over the edge of the staircase, but the Templars have vanished around a corner. They won't patrol back this way again for fifteen minutes; that Templars are present in an orphanage at all is something the boys have never thought to question. To them, it is normal, the only sort of normal they can remember. "Gone," he confirms, and giggles. "I can't believe we made it!"

They are in the administrative wing of the orphanage after hours, off limits and therefore a haven of wonders to two bored boys testing the rigid boundaries of the cage they've lived most of their lives in. They spill out into the torchlit hall and catch their breath, releasing the last of their laughter in great gasping gulps. Even this tiny shred of freedom, of rebellion, is exhilarating.

"We should break into the headmaster's office," the younger boy suggests, eying the heavy wooden door set into the stone wall a short distance away. He gives the older boy a slight shove toward it. "I dare you!"

The older boy reaches for his belt pouch and pulls out the lockpicks he's fashioned from bits and pieces of scrap he's found around the building. He has a bent for mischief, despite the harsh rules they live by, or perhaps because of them, and is secretly schooling himself in the roguish arts. He's twelve years old, with a shaggy mop of dark hair and intelligent golden-brown eyes that flash with humor as he makes quick work of the lock on the door.

The two of them enter the room, taking a torch from the hall with them. The flickering light spills across the polished surface of a broad walnut desk, and the older boy is upon it at once, toying with the legs, the drawers, the joins in the wood, trying to figure out a way to sabotage it so the headmaster will end up on his ass in the morning. The younger boy is more circumspect, keeping his hands to himself as he eyes the open shelf piled high with stacks of papers.

"We should find our files," he suggests. "Change our grades-"

"Or our _names!"_ the older boy giggles as his friend begins to timidly paw through the files. "Find mine!" he encourages. "I want to be Butt Buttley, from North Butterton-"

The younger boy obliges, giggling madly as he digs through the stacks, until he finds what he's looking for. The older boy is distracted, carefully planting tiny metal caltrops across the seat of the headmaster's chair.

The giggling stops. The older boy looks up, sees his companion standing with an open file in his hands, the blood draining from his face.

"You need to see this," he says.

 

* * *

 

 

"The families might not know that their children are still alive," Vivienne said evenly, "but the _children_ do." She could see the stuffed rabbit, the worn nap of its felted gray fur, one of its shiny black button eyes missing. She swallowed hard.

Revered Mother Claudine shifted lower in her chair, stretching her legs out in front of her and casually crossing a pair of swollen cankles. "Actually," she said, "they _don't_."

"Explain yourself," Vivienne said, her misgivings growing.

"The children are assigned new identities upon intake," Claudine said. "They _must_ be; it would be disastrous to allow them to keep their birth names. A child that doesn't manifest mage powers would, theoretically, be released into the world upon coming of age; if they were permitted to retain their true identities, our secret would be out."

Vivienne decided to ignore the word _theoretically -_ for now - and pressed on. "But some of the children must be quite old when they're brought in; they would _remember_ -"

Claudine sniffed. "We've found that young minds are quite pliable, especially after they've been through a traumatic experience like their capture," she said.

"My dear, I cannot possibly be hearing you right," Vivienne said, arching an eyebrow. "You're telling me you _brainwash_ them?" A feeling that she could only describe as revulsion, usually reserved for rapists and people who wore white shoes after Harvestmere, rose up in her gut.

"Relentlessly," Claudine said with a self-satisfied smirk. "Each child is provided with a fictional account of their past and the tragic events that brought them to the orphanage, and it is repeated until they believe nothing else." She paused, examining a bitten fingernail. "We administer a serum made from felandaris seed, which makes them more susceptible to suggestion. After a few weeks of isolation with our ... trainers, no memories of their past lives remain, and they're ready to join the general population of the camp with no risk of our secret being found out. They could literally walk past their parents later in life and not have a clue; and if they themselves were recognized, they'd be the first to insist that their resemblance to some long-dead child was merely coincidental."

"I see," Vivienne said dispassionately as Claudine shifted her plump backside again in her chair, unmindful of the Divine's growing disgust.

"And if they _do_ turn out to have mage powers," Claudine went on obliviously, "often we'll invent stories of how they ended up in the orphanage that make them believe they are a danger to others. Parents killed by their magic, rampaging demons taking out villages, that sort of thing. It makes them more obedient once they're taken to the Circle, more devoted in their studies and cautious in their use of magic, if they have cause to fear their own powers."

Vivienne stilled, her self-assurance slipping by a hairsbreadth for a moment. In her mind's eye a small child pressed against the wall and shook her head in fearful defiance at the enchanter trying to coax a fire spell from her hands, allowing a protective curtain of dark curls to fall over her eyes. _"... died in a warehouse fire,"_ the Templar had said earlier, when a small dusky hand reached out and tugged at her sash, curious and longing after hearing the other mages in the Circle refer to the families they'd left behind. _"Merchants, I believe, in Dairsmuid."_

She pushed the thoughts away and quickly regained her composure. Her situation was different - she'd never been in an orphanage, she would remember if she had - but she still felt a surge of empathy for these children, growing up believing themselves to be alone in the world. She might not know the terror and hardship of growing up in a Chantry prison camp, but she knew the ache of being unvalued, unloved, unheard.

"And, of course, such drastic measures are not always necessary," Claudine carried on. "If a mage gives birth while in the Circle, the child is taken away as a newborn and immediately placed into this same system. Those children are too young to require any special re-education, fortunately."

Vivienne arched an eyebrow. "Fortunately?" she repeated, wondering if there was a spark of hidden guilt over the Chantry's actions buried in there after all.

Revered Mother Claudine nodded, brutishly oblivious. "Felandaris seed is terribly expensive."

 

* * *

 

 

Vivienne drained her glass and poured another generous measure of wine. She hadn't realized quite how exhausted she was, but now, stretched out on her settee before the fire, she felt her body go boneless with fatigue.

From a _human_ standpoint, what the Chantry was doing to those children was reprehensible. She didn't know how she would react to having her memories stolen away and replaced with false ones; on some level it was like a bastardized form of Tranquility, the child's very sense of _self_ taken away.

And yet, on the other hand, it was also very necessary. The Chantry's treatment of mages was already the source of so much conflict, conflict that had cost so much and showed little sign of being over, if the uproar over the appointment of a mage Divine was anything to go by. And that was all over the Chantry's _known_ actions - if _this_ were to get out, it would be disastrous. Claudine had been right; if any of those children had made it out into the world knowing the truth about their imprisonment and started talking, it would have catastrophic consequences. There would be riots, violence, the tearing apart of social systems that had only recently begun to stabilize after the _last_ conflict. In the face of that, the brainwashing of a handful of mage-born children paled in comparison.

As Divine, it was her responsibility to do what was best for the greater good. She _knew_ this. So why did she feel so conflicted?

She set the Hawke file aside for a moment - why did that name sound so familiar? - and lifted the next folder. If she was truly going to sanction this, she at least needed to spend an evening placing herself in the shoes of the children who would never know their entire lives were a lie. It may be a foolish exercise in sentimentality, but she owed them that much, at least.

 

* * *

 

 

\-----------------------------------------

***CONFIDENTIAL***

Case File: SH-1129

Birth Name: _< redacted>_

Assigned Name: Sebastian Vael

\-----------------------------------------

He cries in his bunk at night, burrowed under the scratchy army surplus blanket that feels as bristly as a hairbrush against his skin. He's learned to cry as silently as possible, for the sake of the twenty-four other boys who sleep in this dormitory, their beds lined up in neatly ordered rows of five in the open center of the room. There's no privacy whatsoever, and every noise can be heard in the dead silence of night, every wheeze and snore and the creak of rusty bedsprings when someone turns over on their rickety cot.

He presses his face into the paper-thin mattress to muffle his sobs, terrified of being heard. At seven years old he's the youngest in this barrack, and the newest; the other boys all know the ropes here, are hardened to the rigors of orphanage life, and most of all, are far enough beyond the tears they once shed at night for their own families that they can torment him for his without the slightest shred of self-awareness. He's been their target for the weeks since he was first led in by a stern-faced cleric and made to unpack his satchel of Chantry-issued supplies and ill-fitting new clothing into the footlocker at the end of the bed; he'll be their target until someone newer, younger and more frightened inevitably turns up to take his place, shifting him up in their hierarchy. He doesn't know that now, though; all he knows is that he's weary of being terrorized when the Templars aren't looking, sick of being shoved in the hallways and having his lunch trays knocked out of his hands, and tired most of all of being held down and tormented for being a crybaby. He can't afford for even a single escaped whimper to add fuel to their fire.

Two Templars patrol the room as always, lifting their hooded lanterns as they slowly wind their way up and down the rows of beds, watching for signs of activity or abnormality among the sleeping boys. Sebastian holds his breath as softly thumping bootfalls draw near to his bed; a single blue eye peers out from beneath his blanket, reddened from crying, and waits for the shifting lantern light to wash over the floorboards beside him. He's so badly starved for comfort - _any_ comfort - that he takes a risk and deliberately lets out a single snuffling cry, in the childish hope that the Templar will hear and stop to reach out and touch his shoulder or ruffle his auburn hair with a consoling glove.

She doesn't; the bootsteps continue, the faint jingling of armor fading as the Templar keeps walking down the row.

He aches desperately for love and comfort and gentle touch, yet there is none to be had in this place. Most of all, he misses his family, or what little of his family he can recall; it's only been a matter of weeks, but already they have faded from his mind. He's told they fished the Minanter for a living, and drowned when a surprise storm swamped their boat; he knows rote details about their lives. But he can't remember _them_ , can't see their faces in his mind, or feel their touch or smell their scent; try as he might, he can't recall any memories of his life with them. It's more the _idea_ of them that he misses, rather than the people themselves, who feel as flat and fictional in his mind as characters he's met on the pages of a not particularly well-written book; it's the idea of being near people who cherish and want him, who make him feel safe and at home.

In the absence of memory, he invents. As he lies awake into the small hours of the night he spins a family for himself in his mind, gives them names and faces and breath and life, fantasizes about playing with rambunctious brothers and listening to stories at a kindly grandfather's knee.

He repeats this night after night, his dream life becoming more real and dear to him than his reality. He forces himself to stay awake long past the point of exhaustion so he can spend time with his fictional family, wandering the moors armed with a hunting bow as his father teaches him to track game, or passing cozy hours in the kitchen helping his mother roll pastry dough for the evening's meal.

As time passes the fantasies become more elaborate, until their home grows into a palace, and his father to a monarch. He aches so badly to feel special, here in this place where he is little more to the watching clerics and Templars than a nuisance and a number; and what little boy hasn't, at some time or another, dreamt of being a prince?

He weaves an elaborate assassination plot to explain why he's been parted from them; they've sent him to the Chantry for his safety, and he’ll go back home when he is able. He clings to this fantasy, to the hope of being rescued someday, of being wanted and loved beyond measure. It comes to feel so real that he begins to forget it was ever a dream.

Felandaris seed is slow to leave the body, and he's still susceptible to believing lies ... even his own.

 

* * *

 

 

Vivienne stared at the Revered Mother and, for the scantest of moments, considered shooting a quick lightning bolt to take out the leg of her chair and topple her onto her ample ass. She dismissed the impulse as inelegant, unworthy of the Divine. For the first time she actually missed having someone around who was classless enough to take care of such a thing for her; she wondered how Sera was faring back at Skyhold.

She weaponized words instead. "Forgive me, darling, but you used the word theoretically, earlier," she accused sharply, fixing the woman with a gimlet stare. "A child that didn't develop mage powers would _theoretically_ be released when they came of age. Explain yourself. Why would they not be?"

Claudine looked smug, proud of herself. "The children are taught the Chant of Light as part of their schooling," she said. " _Rigorously_. A highly aggressive course of religious studies make for a large part of their day-to-day education, and the lingering felandaris seed in their bloodstream ensures that the lessons firmly take hold."

Vivienne felt her stomach drop. Encouraging faith was one thing; manufacturing unwitting believers through manipulation and coerced indoctrination was quite another. For an instant she wondered how she would feel if it had been _her_ , wondered what crisis of faith would overcome her if the belief she held dear was revealed to be the product of brainwashing and exploitation; she immediately pushed the thoughts away. The Divine did not have the luxury of such wonderings, even in the abstract; her faith had to be absolute.

"Most of the non-mages, upon reaching adulthood, are so faithful that they do not desire to leave the Chantry," Claudine went on. "It's generally quite easy to steer them into service, either among the clergy or the Templars, depending on where their strengths lie. In the end, very few of our children actually make it back out into the world. It's the perfect system, really; the mage-born children are permanently removed from society, and the Chantry gets a steady stream of faithful, obedient young adults who emerge from the system ready for a lifetime of service."

Vivienne's mind spun. She'd supported the Circles because they were a clear necessity; but this? This tasted more like slavery, with children manipulated into signing their lives away to the Chantry's whims through no fault of their own. Keeping them as children was a prudent precaution; keeping them beyond that, when they _hadn’t_ developed mage powers, was a violation of their free will.

"And you believe that's ethical, my dear?" she asked crisply, and Claudine blinked back at her in surprise, as if she didn't comprehend the question.

"It's only right that the children repay us for the expense of caring for them," the Revered Mother said obtusely. "This system is not inexpensive. At times we'll even ... persuade ... an older child to go directly into Templar training, if they show enough proficiency when they're brought in, and spare ourselves the cost of raising them entirely. It eliminates the gamble of having to feed and house an ungrateful child only to have them leave without giving anything back, and maximizes our gains."

"Of course, darling," Vivienne said smoothly through clenched teeth. She'd once killed a man for the minor offense of insulting the Inquisitor at a party; the urge to watch this odious bitch locked in a casing of ice, gasping and pleading as the Marquis had, was overwhelming. She was no longer sure that reassigning this woman to the ass-end of the continent would be enough; she'd be lucky to leave the room at all.

"And besides, there are other vital benefits to this arrangement. In their religious education we _strongly_ promote the belief that ... sex ... is a sin." Claudine said the word distastefully, and Vivienne privately wondered if she herself was a virgin; that would explain a _lot_ about the woman. "Any of these children who elect to enter Chantry service are highly encouraged to take vows of chastity, as a safeproof against their mage parent's blood being passed down to another generation. If it weren't for the apostates out there who elude capture and selfishly keep breeding, we could have the curse of magic completely bred out within an age; but, alas."

"How many of these mage-born people serve us now?" Vivienne asked, rather fearing the answer.

Claudine thought about it for a moment. "I'd say they make up perhaps a quarter of the clergy? It's higher with the Templars; I'd estimate around half, there. For some reason, the children come out of the system knowing how to fight."

"That many?" Vivienne asked, aghast.

The Revered Mother misread her reaction. "Like I said," she gloated proudly, "it's the _perfect_ system."

 

* * *

 

 

Vivienne polished off her third glass of wine and poured a fourth. She could feel the pleasant buzz of the alcohol at the back of her brain, and wondered archly if there'd ever been a drunk Divine staggering around these living quarters. She decided that there must have been; already the job was proving to be a sharp enough burden that surely _someone_ must have sought to soften the edges, Most Holy or no.

She closed the Vael file with a bitter sigh - come to think of it, she'd heard about that incident in Starkhaven the year before, when a man marched on the city, absurdly convinced that he was their deposed prince. It had been easy to write off as mental illness, the ravings of a madman; but now she knew the truth. It had been the Chantry's doing, all of it, the life of one of Claudine's faithful servants ruined for the church's gain.

_How many others?_

She shifted Sebastian's file to the bottom of the stack and glanced at the next, drawing her breath in with a hiss as she caught the name scribed on the folder's edge. Well. Here it was; it was inevitable that a file should turn up eventually of a person she knew. She'd known a great many Circle mages, after all, and no small amount of Templars and Chantry staff; that one of one of them had passed through the internment system should have been little surprise. For that matter, there were probably countless other familiar names among the files still in her office, locked away in the trunk.

Feeling a deep disquiet settle in her bones, she opened the folder and began to read.

 

* * *

 

 

\-----------------------------------------

***CONFIDENTIAL***

Case File: FE-1147

Birth Name: _< obscured by ink splotch>_

Assigned Name: Cullen Rutherford

\-----------------------------------------

He packs and unpacks his bag half a dozen times, stopping to take everything out and rearrange the folded clothing and travel supplies again and again. _Maker_ , what in the world is he doing?

"Cullen." He closes his eyes and draws in a deep breath at the sound of her voice at the door, but he doesn't respond. He hears her soft footfalls move across the room, then feels the warmth of a soothing hand pressed to his hip, the thumb tracing slow circles against the small of his back. "Are you sure about this?"

He bites back the urge to laugh, or maybe scream. He isn't sure; _of course_ he's not sure. He hasn't been sure of anything for a very long time.

It begins with the lyrium withdrawals. He spends his nights tormented by jumbled dreams and flashbacks, of Haven and Kirkwall and Kinloch, of demons and mages and war and a breach that sunders the sky, of things that have been and things that never were, until he's no longer able to separate what is real from what isn't.

Somewhere, in the midst of those fever-addled dreams, images begin to emerge that are different from the others, things that feel at once both impossible and deeply, achingly _true._

_A man boosts him onto broad shoulders so he can see the passing parade over the press of the crowd. A boy with golden curls not unlike his own extends a hand and drops a coin - for luck - into his outstretched palm. A woman tousles his hair as he clings to her skirt, watching in rapt attention as she turns the pages of a storybook._

These morsels of - dream? hallucination? memory? - whatever they are, they vanish as quickly as they appear, flashing quickly to and from his mind like the random flicker of lightning behind a heavy cover of clouds. Attempting to hold them is like trying to collect water in a sieve; as badly as he wants to gather them and coax more details from their broken shells, he's left chasing scattering shards, random fragments of a past that may or may not have been.

He asks Cassandra about it. He's embarrassed, when pressed, to admit that he knows nothing of his family; he remembers joining the Templars at an early age, but when he reaches beyond that, he comes up shockingly blank. He's never questioned it before; he'd been so eager to serve the Templar order as a devout, almost fanatical youth that he never stopped to wonder how he came to be there, but he wonders now. Could what he's seeing actually be _genuine,_ actual buried memories of his past - his _family_ \- rising to the surface? The Seeker confirms that it's possible; it's happened before, long-repressed memories triggered by the stress and trauma of lyrium withdrawal.

It happens more and more, and moves beyond the privacy of dreams. One minute he's playing chess with Dorian; the next he's caught up in a dizzying flashback. _A girl flashes him a stuck-up smirk as she moves her Templar to capture his queen; the smug smile creates deep dimples on either side of her mouth as a mop of blonde ringlets spills over her shoulder._ Dorian notices the shaking of his hand and asks if he's all right; he makes his excuses and rushes from the room, feeling sick and disoriented.

He breaks down and confesses his problem to the Inquisitor at last, and together they pore over maps, books, Scout Harding's field notes - whatever they can find - comparing them against his fragmented recollections, searching for a place where geography and memory align. _A small town square, a golem statue where the pigeons liked to roost. A moss-green pond in a secluded glade, a weathered fishing dock._

Finally they think they've narrowed it down to a village in the south of Ferelden. The war council accepts his request for a leave of absence. They're supportive, understanding of his need to go, even though it will most likely prove to be a fool's errand. He has no idea what he'll find in Honnleath, whether the family he's imagined will still be there or if they ever existed at all. But he needs to know, needs to find answers, needs to fill the space inside him that he never realized was empty until now.

So when the Inquisitor leans against him and asks if he's sure about this, he answers truthfully: "No." He heaves a sigh and begins, again, to arrange his belongings into his knapsack, his shaking hand making a mess of once-neatly folded smallclothes. "But I need to do it anyhow."

 

* * *

 

 

Vivienne felt her mask slip and stared at the Revered Mother with unconcealed distress. " You're telling me that fully _half_ of our Templars have suffered prolonged mental abuse and were manipulated into service," she said, "yet we wonder why so many went mad and rebelled?"

"Which only _proves_ we're doing the Maker's work!" Claudine said, still smugly, infuriatingly oblivious. "The mage-borns have proven they're a danger, whether they ultimately manifest their parent's powers or not; it's now clearer than ever that they _must_ be detained and kept from the world."

"And this is the answer?" Vivienne pressed on, feeling deeply conflicted. It was as naked a question as she'd ever asked - no false sweetness nor haughty distance in her voice, just a genuine desire to know what the Revered Mother truly felt, for she had no idea, after absorbing so much information so rapidly, quite how she felt herself.

"The system works; it has worked for centuries. Besides, it's not always as harsh as it might sound to the uninitiated," Claudine insisted, casting Vivienne a supercilious glance. "Sometimes there are special circumstances; for example, we knew of a mage-born boy connected to an arl in Ferelden, but we had a guarantee of the family's cooperation - " _blackmail material, you mean,_ Vivienne thought archly, " - and he was allowed to remain in place under our close watch until he came of age, at which time he was ... _highly encouraged_ ... to join the Templar order." The Revered Mother smiled smugly, as if their largess toward this single mage-born child made up for the abuses against the others. "As I recall he did quite well; so as you see, not every child withers under our supervision. The Templars you speak of were clearly an aberration."

It only then occurred to Vivienne that the woman actually _believed_ every word she was saying. She began to ponder possible reassignments for the dear Revered Mother – surely there was a pressing need for kitchen help _somewhere_ in the Chantry system, or a village chapel that badly needed new outhouses dug?

"There have been, naturally, _incidents_ over the years, but the same is true of the _real_ orphanage system; our methods can hardly be blamed," Claudine said, still on the defensive; she nodded to the file-filled trunk that sat ajar beside them. "You will find the rare mental lapse among those records, or death or accidental disfigurement for that matter, just as you would among _any_ concentrated population, the Circle included."

Vivienne pressed her eyes closed, rubbing her temple against a nascent headache. Behind her eyelids, a slender hand lifted tangled hair from over a pair of red-rimmed violet eyes. The girl that once was peered down the hall of Wycome's circle, gauging the distance to the exits, measuring the pounding heartbeats between the patrolling Templars' steps. "What about runaways?" Vivienne asked steadily, her mask already fixed firmly back in place.

"Attempts, certainly, but even non-mage-born children living with their families will attempt to run away from home from time to time," Claudine said dismissively.

"And successes?" Vivienne prompted.

The Revered Mother shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "Three, a few decades ago. Perhaps others, earlier on; the records from past ages are a bit lacking. Still, that's a remarkably low rate given the thousands of children we've sheltered since the start of the program. It's obvious the Maker favors the work we're doing."

 

* * *

 

 

Vivienne paused abruptly in her recollections, set Cullen's file aside, and thumbed through the others until she found the first from several glasses of wine ago, suddenly understanding a coded notation she'd found on the paperwork that hadn't been present on any of the others.

_Three, a few decades ago._

She was the Divine, charged with the spiritual health of a war-torn continent and, now, accidental overseer of the Mage-Born solution and all it entailed, a program that was problematic yet, perhaps, regrettably necessary. She should be the very last person to root for that system to fail any of its charges.

Yet somehow, she couldn't help the knowing, oddly satisfied smile that lifted the corner of her mouth as she opened the file again and went back to reading.

 

* * *

 

 

\-----------------------------------------

***CONFIDENTIAL***

Case File: FE-1248

Birth Name: Garrett Hawke

Assigned Name: _< illegible>_

\-----------------------------------------

Garrett. _Garrett._ He repeats the word over and over in his head, pulling his lips into different shapes as he mouths: Garrrrrrrrett. _Garrettttttt_. It's not long before the sounds lose all semblance of meaning, reverting to random nonsense syllables that roll like marbles in the back of his head. _Garrrrrreeeeettttt_.

He notices one of the Templars eyeing him oddly from across the room and obediently goes back to reciting the Chant like a good little boy, raising his voice among the hundreds of others that are gathered in the main hall for morning worship. Yet he holds the word close to his heart all the same, still full of the same sense of wonder and pure awe that he's felt since the fateful night when he first reads his file and discovers the truth.

 _My name is Garrett Hawke_.

He looks across the room and catches a wary eye watching him nervously; the other boy quickly looks away, ducking his dark shaggy head. Garrett once only knew him as that annoying kid from his Chantry Studies class; the first time they ever speak is when he deliberately stops to tie his shoelace in the hallway between classes, hoping to stall the boy and get him alone. Predictably, the kid is irritated, his eyes flashing with defiance as he tries to push past. "Out of the way, jerkass," he grits.

Garrett has intended to be more suave about it, has the conversation all planned out in his head, but in the moment he finds himself blurting out, all at once without pausing for breath: _"Your-name-is-really-Carver-and-you're-my-brother."_

He holds the file up as proof, but the kid - _Carver_ \- scoffs and knocks it out of his hand, stepping on one of the scattered papers and giving it a twist with his boot as he walks away. Garrett calls after him desperately, the one thing he thinks can make him turn around and listen: _"We have a mother."_ Carver pauses, his head tilted in profile, distrust and raw, naked longing clearly warring in his shifting blue eye. Garrett draws in a shuddering breath."Her name is Leandra, and she's still alive."

The girl - _Bethany_ \- is more difficult to get alone, due to the rigid rules that keep boys and girls segregated except during morning and evening worship, but she's far easier to convince. She wants - as they all do - to believe in the absurd dream of actually finding a loving parent - a _family_ \- waiting in the village indicated in Garrett's file as their mother's last known place of residence.

 _Lothering_. They research it by turns in the library when they are supposed to be studying, poring over maps and tracing the routes that three runaway children might take to get there. It's not terribly far, but without coin or supplies, it may as well be on the other side of the world.

That doesn't stop them, though. It's sheer insanity, but it's all they have.

They report their findings by exchanging coded notes left under their trays at lunchtime and slowly make plans over the course of many brief whispered meetings in the stairwell. It is foolish to do this under the Templars' ever-watching eyes, and it takes time to do properly without drawing their attention; but Garrett is a master both at stealth and at convincing his friends to do foolish things, and he makes it happen. At last, the day is here.

Garrett looks away from Carver and glances in the opposite direction, at the girls' side of the room. Bethany fidgets anxiously in her seat, cheeks blushing as her tongue stumbles nervously over the group recitation of Transfigurations. She turns and catches his eye, silently pleading with him for reassurance. He can see the fear on her face, but there's excitement, too.

They intend to slip away as soon as worship services are over, under the cover of chaos as the entire population of the orphanage elbows their way through the building, scrambling not to be late for their next classes. For added distraction his friend Rhys has agreed to set a series of smoke grenades off in the crowded hallway; the resultant bedlam should give them plenty of time to escape the compound unnoticed. Garrett slips a hand in his pocket, and fingers the makeshift lockpicks he has stored there. _Today_.

Bethany turns away, facing forward as she joins in the call and response of the closing prayer. She's easily the most devout of the three; he marvels that he knows that, just as he knows now that Carver isn't really as big a jerk as he pretends and that he likes lamb stew night in the cafeteria while she prefers fish pie. Somehow, in the course of their plotting and scheming, he's gotten to know them, has almost, he realizes in awe, come to _love_ them in some strange, unfathomable way. Even if this doesn't work, he has a family in these two, the brother and sister he never dreamed he could have; the idea of it, the absurd and unexpected _beauty_ of it, fills him with wonder.

At the front of the room, the Sister who leads the services readies the bell that will dismiss them. Garrett tenses; across the room, Carver flexes and reaches for his knapsack, while Bethany closes her eyes and gulps in a deep breath.

The bell rings.

 

* * *

 

 

"Well, my dear, you've certainly given me a lot to think about." Vivienne tried to massage a knot of tension from the base of her neck – the heavy headgear didn’t help; her neck _always_ ached these days – and rose from her chair. She wasn’t certain whether the cleric was actually finished talking, but she was done listening; she wouldn’t, _couldn’t_ , process any more.

She suppressed the urge to evict the Revered Mother from her office with a well-aimed bolt of frost, and circled her desk instead, clasping the woman’s hand graciously between hers. “I have enjoyed our little chat, Mother," she said pleasantly, purposely diminishing Claudine’s title out of spite. “And darling, I do _so_ appreciate your contributions to the Chantry – “ _or, at least, I will once you’re reassigned and scrubbing latrines in a rural church somewhere –_ “and thank you for your input today.”

Claudine rose, her lips pressed into a flat disapproving seam at her abrupt dismissal. “This was meant as more than merely an informational meeting," she said severely. “It was intended as a warning: with the current state of the Chantry, it is more imperative than ever to protect the Mage-Born Solution, perhaps even expand and strengthen it.” She straightened her cowl, a lock of frizzy gray hair falling free. “I realize there were other candidates for Divine that might have made the mistake of disbanding the program, out of a _highly_ misguided sympathy for these dangerous individuals; I thank the Maker every day that we ended up with the intelligent and enlightened leader the system needs in these trying times.”

“Just as I am thankful to have such _sincere_ and loyal servants," Vivienne said archly as she showed the woman, regrettably unharmed, to the door.

 

* * *

 

 

The fire had burned itself to embers by the time she poured the last of the red wine into her glass. Maker, she would feel it in the morning, but perhaps she needed to; she needed the reminder of the day she’d had. It was tempting to simply forget what she heard today and blindly let the Mage-Born solution continue as it always had; but she refused to be _that_ Divine.

She felt so deeply conflicted. She had always been highly supportive of the Circle; it was a crucial system that brought order to a chaotic world, taught mages how to regulate and control their dangerous powers, and protected the world at large, mage and non-mage alike, from the horrors of demons and rampant blood magic. She never understood why other mages found it so oppressive; she'd been able to attain a great measure of status and freedom simply by respecting the rules and keeping an intelligent eye on Circle politics, looking for opportunities to press her advantage. If others were too weak or lazy to do the same, or fought the system because they were stubbornly, foolishly determined to be miserable, then she had little sympathy for their unhappiness; they'd brought it upon themselves.

Yet this was something different, something _beyond_ the system she'd known. She could forgive the Circle its flaws because it was so necessary, but _this_? While she couldn't deny the many benefits of making sure none of the captured apostates' children developed powers and became apostates themselves - the recent war had definitively proven just how dangerous mages could be, if left unchecked out in the world - did the ends truly justify the means? At one time she would have said that keeping apostates from running amok across Thedas would have been worth any price. But when that price included the abduction and incarceration of children simply for having the _potential_ to become mages, manipulation, mind control, memory erasure, the continued enslavement of people who had proven to _not_ have powers for the sake of covering up the Chantry's lies, even the hint of eugenics - how far was _too far?_

She didn't know. Maker help her, she didn't know.

It troubled her deeply that so many of the people serving her were unknowing products of that system of abuse, as well. How many of them were combustion grenades waiting to go off, like so many Templars had? What were the long-term effects of remembering false memories, believing false beliefs? The idea that the system _forced_ faith on the children to keep them obedient still sat like a bad taste in her mouth. The Circle had told her what to wear, when to eat, how to behave; but it had _never_ attempted to tell her what to think. Some things were sacred above all others.

She let out an exhausted sigh, raising her glass and swirling the wine within against the glow of the dying fire. She hated Revered Mother Claudine for a great many things, but most of all for dumping this in her lap _now_ when she already had so very many other issues that demanded her time. There was so much to do; the world had been in a state of uproar since a mage had been named Divine, with widespread rioting across Orlais and the Free Marches, and several reports of mages being lynched in rural villages; all those disturbances needed to be responded to, crushed if necessary. There were a whole slew of apostates out there who still needed to be rounded up and brought in to the newly reinstated Circles, and several details to work out over how to rebuild damaged Circle towers and redistribute the populations of those residencies to minimize future discontent. And the Templar order was still in shambles, and dangerously understaffed, with so many senior Templars dead....

Vivienne stilled, chilled by a sudden thought. They _needed_ new Templars, and clergy besides, and if she decided to abolish or reform the Mage-Born Solution, their ready-made source of eager new recruits would be gone. Keeping the system in place for the Chantry's gain suddenly made a whole lot of sense, so much sense that for a dizzying moment she was almost willing to overlook all the rest ... was this how it began, then? Did atrocities take hold simply because the people who might object to them decide to turn their heads and look the other way?

 _No_. She would not be that Divine; she _could not_.

So she shuffled the Hawke file to the bottom of the stack and opened the folder that rose to the top, glancing idly at the pages within. While she desperately longed to brush this aside and pretend she'd never heard of that thrice-damned Revered Mother and her Mage-Born Solution, she forced herself to keep reading, fortifying herself with a long draw from her glass of wine as she turned to the pages that lay spread in her lap....

... and gasped, sick and stunned, stomach retching, heart pounding like a war drum. The whole world spun around her as her glass fell from her slack fingers; red wine splashed across the angora rug like the angry slash of a wound. Her chest heaved, fighting for shallow gasping breaths as her eyes remained transfixed on the file in her lap, staring, staring, _staring_ at the words on the page....

 

* * *

 

\-----------------------------------------

***CONFIDENTIAL***

Case File: WY-1012

Birth Name: _< redacted>_

Assigned Name: Vivienne

\-----------------------------------------

The Templar who drags her back to her dormitory treats her more like an ambulatory sack of potatoes than a fourteen year old girl, pushing and jerking her unresisting body around with more force than necessary. She's gone limp against the rib-crushing cage of his arm, her head pitched forward, hair hanging across her face as she gasps and sobs, still sick from the smite and even sicker still from what came before.

He shoves her into the dorm room coldly before slamming the door; a key clatters in the lock. When the door is eventually unlocked again she knows there will be repercussions to face, punishments meted out, angry lectures given, the threat of Tranquility thrown about to scare her; but right now she can't stir herself enough to care.

She looks numbly around the dorm room that is normally shared between a half dozen girls; it's empty, her roommates all away at their mid-day classes, or maybe at lunch, chattering and happy and unaware that her world has just ended. She's thankful for the privacy, at least; there is nobody around to care as she flops down onto the nearest bed - too exhausted to even make her way across the room to lie on her own - and continues to cry, her shoulders shaking from the force of great heaving, gasping sobs.

She relives the last hour. In her mind's eye, behind the blur of tears, she sees Enchanter Allegra again. The woman stamps her foot impatiently at a teenage girl who presses herself against the wall, shaking her head in mute, terrified refusal. "You need to learn to master _all_ the elements," the Enchanter says briskly. "I understand that your other teachers have gone easy on you, but you'll find that I am not so soft. You will not leave this room until you summon a fireball; I don't care if you die of old age here."

 _I can't_ , Vivienne wants to say, but her throat is too choked with fear to allow the words to pass. _Not fire; anything but fire_....

The Enchanter pushes, and pushes, uncaring of her student's fear. Vivienne tries to resist, tries to _hide_ , but she feels frustration and rage and _power,_ white-hot burning _power_ , build in her core. She can feel the heat spiraling up in her, pressing against her skin, wanting out, out, _out_ until it's a struggle to keep it leashed. She's terrified of letting go, terrified of what might happen if she allows herself to let this power out from where she's carefully spent several years - the entirety of her life, as far as she can remember - keeping it desperately, deeply buried.

She remembers - as she does often - asking the Templar about her parents. She feels, again, the familiar rise of sickness and shame and hot, crushing guilt at the words the Templar _hadn't_ spoken, but she knows in her heart to be true.

 _Died in a warehouse fire_.

"You will summon a fireball for me _now!_ " Enchanter Allegra shouts in her face, so close now that she feels terrifyingly exposed, unable to hide. " _Do it!_ "

She loses control. The fire, when it comes, is not the delicate, palm-of-the-hand lick of flame that the Enchanter wants but a terrifying conflagration, a vortex of flame so strong that it sucks all the air from the room and blows the glass from the window frames. For a moment the wall of flame towers as high as the room's vast ceiling, before the inferno funnels out of existence as suddenly as it appeared.

Little damage is done, beyond the windows; the room is stone and the Enchanter, protected by a shielding spell, suffers no more than singed eyebrows. But Vivienne is distraught, staring at the scene through terrified eyes as the first inconsolable sobs begin to effervesce in her chest.

She runs. She times her footfalls to the pounding of her heart, and when she reaches the main hall there's nowhere left to go but it isn't far enough. She sees the entry doors and is suddenly, blindingly stricken by a bone-deep desperation to be somewhere else, _anywhere but here_. She pauses, shaking and shuddering, and waits for the Templars to patrol out of the way....

She uncurls herself from the fetal ball she finds herself in and rises from the tear-soaked sheets of her roommate's bed. She lurches across the room, drunk on pain and fear, and makes her way to another roommate's chest of drawers, a plan disjointedly forming in her mind. She paws through the girl's belongings, looking for one item in particular; her hand closes around a leather-wrapped object and draws it out. The roommate is Orlesian, and shocked them all with her grooming habits when she arrived, the other girls all titillated and strangely intrigued by the way she shaves the hair completely off her legs, among _other_ body parts.

Vivienne unwraps the bundle, revealing a straight-edged shaving razor; a tentative test of her finger against the blade reveals it to be wickedly sharp.  She clutches its handle and feels stronger for having it, desperation slowly melting, yielding to resolve as she makes her way over to her own bunk and sits down on the edge of the mattress, choking back a hiccuping sob.

She can't do this anymore. She has lived here in the Wycome circle for as long as she can remember, since she was very young; she can recall nothing about the life she had before, save for what little she's been told. She's desperately, agonizingly tired of it all. Tired of fighting against her fear of her own magic. Tired of allowing the abuses of Templars, like the one who feels the need to use a smite on her when he finds her wandering the woods half a mile away, despite the fact that she doesn't offer any resistance to being captured after her kneejerk escape attempt. Tired of hearing that _mages aren't people_ , and more tired still of believing it.

Most of all, she's tired of hiding.

She leans toward the chest of drawers at the end of her bed. Atop it, the stuffed rabbit from her childhood rests propped up against the wall, its lop ears folded down to cover its eyes. Beside it, there's a looking glass. She barely recognizes the girl who stares back, wild-eyed and swollen, cheeks glistening with shed tears, lungs still wracked by fractured, gasping sobs. She cannot live this life anymore. She will not.

She reaches for a fistful of her shoulder-length hair and pulls it aside, revealing the graceful line of her throat. Her hand trembles as she raises the razor, watching in the mirror as she takes a deep breath and makes the first, irreversible, cut.

She drops the razor and stares, shaking, as she lowers her hand from her neck and uncurls the fingers. She watches in fascination as the dark hair clutched within separates into severed strands and flutters to the floor, and her fear falls away with it. She takes up the razor again and makes another cut, and another, until the floor around her bed is dark with shed tresses.

It's been years since she followed her rabbit's example and grew her hair long so she can disappear into safety behind it; as she rises from her bed and runs her hands over her newly shaved head, feeling the smooth glide of her stubbled scalp beneath her questing fingers, she suddenly feels empowered, bold, _new_.

She will never hide again.

**Author's Note:**

> I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the people involved in [this discussion](http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/14317.html?thread=54010093#t54010093) on the k!meme boards. While this is not exactly a fill for that prompt, the comments there about Vivienne's past started the wheels turning and made me think differently about an often overlooked character and the systems that shaped her way of thinking.
> 
> At the same time, I came up with a throwaway prompt that I was going to toss up on the k!meme board: _Sebastian marches to retake Starkhaven, only to discover that his memories of being a prince were fantasies spun by a little boy desperate to escape the harsh realities of orphanage life. Eventually they became so real he believed them._ (I didn't post it, but if someone wants to write the story of adult Sebastian rolling into Starkhaven for me, I'd give them my firstborn ... just putting that out there!)
> 
> Somehow the two things combined and ... this happened.
> 
> I would appreciate any and all feedback, if anyone has the time to offer comments or ask questions; this was such a risky story to tackle and such a complicated premise. I don't know if I've managed to translate it to paper in a way that completely makes sense to the reader ... please let me know!
> 
> * * *
> 
> Come say hi to me on Tumblr! [ladydanya.tumblr.com](http://ladydanya.tumblr.com)


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